Poetry and Works
| This quote, from Chen to a friend, shows his attitude as a formative poet of the Early Period of Tang poetry:
The art of letters has been declining for five hundred years....In my leisure hours, I have looked into the poems of the Ch'i and Liang Dynasties, and I could not help sighing when I found all genuine feeling and insight were smothered by meaningless figures of speech and squeamish refinement of words. So much rhetoric and so little sentiment! When will the grand tradition of Shih Ching revive? |
Chen Zi'ang is well known for his collection of thirty-eight poems "Ganyu" (感遇), written in a simpler vocabulary than typified the poetry of that time and which were heavily influenced by Daoism. He has one poem in the Three Hundred Tang Poems, translated by Witter Bynner as "On a Gate-tower at Yuzhou"
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Famous quotes containing the words poetry and/or works:
“I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life- outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 5:15,16.